1st ‘Long’ weekend!

The company I work for was acquired at the end of December 2019. After going through at least 4 acquisitions where WE were the acquirer, I can say it’s a dramatically different perspective when you are on the acquiree side! In the midst of that backdrop along comes ye olde global pandemic (and all that baggage that comes along with that)! Thankful to be still employed, and happily working from home these past almost 2 months for a very cool and ‘better world’ focused company!! With the release of Q1 earnings and a company wide Teams get together, the call ended with the announcement that May 1st was a global ‘day off’ and we would enjoy our first long weekend of ‘summer-ish’ 2020!

I am fortunate in many ways…we live in a small house and I have a fairly well equipped workshop (not to mention more interests and hobbies than I can hope to master/keep on top of)! While some pine about not being able to go out or go here or there, I am happier than a pig in poop-to-just spend the time at home in the workshop or backyard (weather dependent), or even a nice bike ride for a few hours with Mrs. T. to grab some groceries and get some socially distant exercise.

One of Mrs. T’s bookkeeping clients had some stone left over from several jobs and was looking to get rid of it and asked if we wanted it…never one to say no to something for a future project we jumped at the offer! 4 part-skids of stone got dropped off Thursday and we moved them to the backyard Thursday evening and Friday. There was an old stone step as well about 10″ high X 60″ long X 16″ wide. We had been talking about replacing our front step (and in fact front door and side lites and awning over the front door too…but that’s a future project)! The stones made it to the back in either a wheel barrow or dolly. A few hours later…all but the step was in the back (and I had amassed 15,000 steps for the day :)). The step was only going further up the driveway until it gets used… Given the weight of the step, the dolly and wheel barrow were out, and not having a pump truck/pallet jack, I thought the engine hoist might be the ticket. Initially I thought I’d lift it with the hoist, but then thought just put the pallet on the ‘legs’ and run it up the driveway. Only problem was that the skid (and stone) was lower than the legs of the hoist :(… Not even my 2-ton car jack would fit under the stone in order to lift it up....thankfully a 5′ section of square tube and a pivot point easily raised each end up high enough to get the car jack under one side at a time so I could raise it with jack stands until I could slide the engine hoist under it.

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Last weekend, because everyone – {edit} heck even Alton just did it… 🙂

…has to make Dalgona Coffee (and sourdough {and now banana bread, apparently})….we tried it… I knew I didn’t like coffee…but figured a bit of that in a swarm of milk would be OK…. well… I really don’t like coffee, especially really STRONG coffee even with a tonne of milk! Oddly enough….the whipped coffee didn’t seem to want to fully dissolve in the milk leading to some actually drinkable coffee/milk and then a coffee bomb! Even Mrs T., who adores coffee and, in fact NEEDS that morning cup-a before it’s safe to attempt a conversation, said it was too strong! Oh well…at least that box can now be ticked :). One additional learning that came out of this experiment is that it’s NOT advisable to nuke any leftovers….

This weekend we decided to have pizza on Saturday night…. One batch of the pizza dough only makes about 8 pizzas…(which is only 2 per for dinner and only 2 pies for lunches…) and a double batch yields a whopping 16 pies!

Went with the ‘leftover’s route… My current go-to pizza dough recipe is a slightly tweaked version of one from The Art of Wood Fired Cooking, by Andrea Mugaini (we typically do the 3 hour version).

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 tsp instant active dry yeast
• 4 cups ’00’ pizza flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp olive oil
  • Place flour, yeast, salt and water in bowl of stand mixer.
  • Mix on low speed for 2 minutes, adding 1 tbsp flour at a time if too wet and not combining into a shaggy dough
  • Drizzle with oil and mix for an additional 2 minutes, at which point dough should clear sides of bowl and form smooth ball
  • Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes to allow flour to hydrate
  • Resume mixing for at least 3 (I usually do closer to 10) minutes
  • Place dough into lightly oiled bowl, covering with plastic wrap
  • Let sit on counter at room temperature for 2 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk
  • Portion dough into balls (single recipe should yield 4 to 5 10″ pizzas)
  • Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes
  • Press or roll out to desired thickness and place on well semolina’d pizza peel and finish as desired

The oven needs about 1 hour of preheat before it’s Pizza ready….which gives us time to roll out the dough and prep the pizzas.. . The key to success is to have everything ready to fire before you start to cook the first one.

Usually I try and do something extra with all the heat, but this weekend just did a quick pizza fire. Even the veggie toppings were cooked inside this time (apparently I often burn them…. :|). Three or four pizzas at a time and they’re done in no time! I man the oven and a helper ferries the pizzas to and from the kitchen. This summer I’m planning on making a permanent installation of the pizza oven (and the BBQ’s) so once that is done I expect that the heat will last longer so the current relatively short ‘sweet spot’ will be longer. As it is, by the time pizza #16 is done the floor is typically cooler than it should be for perfect pizza crust…

I purchased a Aerogarden for Mrs. T. for this past Christmas, along with a variety of pods, including some heirloom cherry tomatoes. This past week we noticed the first tomato…..and now we have at least 16 on the way! Can’t wait to taste the first fresh home grown tomatoes! (I wasn’t sure if they would self pollinate, so I used a q-tip to rub all the flowers and hopefully spread the pollen. By the number of growing tomatoes…I guess that worked!